Month: December 2017

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Why Amazon patented a self-destruct drone

Drone fragmentation
A diagram shows how a delivery drone might manage its own controlled fragmentation if it encounters problems during its trip. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

Most inventors look for ways to make their machines more robust, but Amazon has won a patent for delivery drones that fall apart more easily.

Why? For safety reasons.

The patent application, filed last year and published last week, lays out a concept that calls for an automated “fragmentation controller” to be included on the drone.

That controller, analogous to a flight controller, works out and updates a backup plan for breaking the drone apart if the flight is disrupted for some reason.

As the drone goes about its business, onboard systems and the drone fleet’s mission control center would be on the watch for potentially hazardous conditions, such as inclement weather or equipment malfunctions.

If the drone gets into a jam, the fragmentation controller could be activated to go through an optimized self-destruct sequence. Pieces of hardware would drop off or be ejected based on the terrain that’s surrounding the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, when it gets into trouble.

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Cosmic mappers win share of glitzy spotlight

WMAP map of cosmos
A color-coded projection map of the full sky shows temperature variations as measured by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. (NASA Photo)

This year’s Breakthrough Prizes, cast as the “Oscars of Science,” are going to genetic engineers, disease fighters, math whizzes — and the scientists on the cosmos-mapping team behind the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP.

Today’s award of $22 million in prizes is being wrapped into a ceremony at NASA’s Ames Research Center that combines Hollywood glitz with Silicon Valley brainpower.

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is the host for the show, which is being televised by National Geographic and streamed live via Facebook and YouTube at 7 p.m. PT tonight. Celebrity presenters include Ashton Kutcher (“That ’70s Show”); his wife, Mila Kunis (“Bad Moms”); and Kerry Washington (“Scandal”).

The prize program was established in 2012 by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and his wife, Julia Milner, in league with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

It ranks among science’s richest award programs, with seven $3 million prizes being awarded this year in life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics. Another $1 million is going out to early-career scientists, students and teachers.

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‘Tis the season … for a holiday supermoon

Supermoon
An image of the moon taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is shown in two halves to illustrate the difference between the apparent size of a supermoon (left) and a “micromoon” (right).

Supermoon Sunday is at hand, and although some may scoff, the supermoon concept provides a good excuse to take a close look at a celestial sight we often take for granted.

By some measures, Dec. 3’s full moon is the only supermoon of 2017. The liberal definition would be a full or new moon that’s at or near its closest approach to Earth in its orbit. My definition is stricter: There’s only one supermoon in a given year, reserved for the full moon with the biggest apparent size.

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Launching a sports car to Mars? Questions abound

Falcon Heavy
An artist’s conception shows the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. (SpaceX via YouTube)

Billionaire CEO Elon Musk tweeted out the idea of putting a cherry-red Tesla Roadster on SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy rocket and sending it toward Mars, sparking lots of questions in the process.

The first question has to be: Is he serious?

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Science fiction duo looks at life after ‘The Martian’

Neal Stephenson and Andy Weir
Sci-fi author Andy Weir (“The Martian,” “Artemis”) makes a point while Neal Stephenson (“Seveneves,” “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.”) looks on. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

What could be better than hearing a science fiction writer talk about how to create whole new worlds? How about doubling that to two science fiction writers?

That was the case for a Seattle-area appearance by Andy Weir — the author of “The Martian” and “Artemis,” a just-released novel set on a moon colony in the 2080s.

When he showed up at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park on Nov. 30, he brought along Seattle’s own Neal Stephenson, the author of science-fiction novels ranging from “Snow Crash” to “Seveneves” to “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.”

A standing-room-only crowd of 600 or so heard Weir and Stephenson hold forth on the writing racket. Here are some gems from the conversation:

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Dormant thrusters on Voyager work after 37 years

Voyager probe
An artist’s conception shows the Voyager spacecraft pointing its antenna back toward Earth. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration)

Imagine you had a car sitting in storage since 1980, and suddenly you needed to start it up. Now imagine that it revs up like a charm as soon as you turn the key.

That’s the scenario NASA is using as a comparison for this week’s startup of a thruster system that’s been sitting dormant on the Voyager 1 probe for 37 years.

One important difference: Voyager’s key had to be turned by remote control from a distance of 13.1 billion miles.

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Australia powers up Tesla’s monster battery

Tesla batteries
Tesla’s battery bank is linked to wind turbines in South Australia. (Jay Weatherill via Twitter)

South Australia’s state government turned on the switch for the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery today, marking a signal achievement for rapid deployment of renewable energy resources.

Technically speaking, the 100-megawatt battery bank built by Tesla isn’t the highest-capacity power storage system: Molten-salt batteries, for example, can store more energy for distribution over a longer time. Alphabet’s X team, the “moonshot factory” associated with Google, is currently seeking commercial partners for a megawatt-scale, molten-salt battery project called Malta.

Even in the lithium-ion category, there are bigger power storage systems in the works: A battery bank that’s being built for Southern California Edison can be expanded to store 300 megawatts of power.

But that battery isn’t due for completion until 2021 or so. What’s most notable about the Tesla facility connected to Neoen’s Hornsdale Wind Farm is that it was installed under the terms of a “100 Days or It’s Free” deal with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Today’s switching-on ceremony took place just 63 days after the grid-connection agreement was signed in September, although Tesla got a head start on the project before the signing.

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